20“For what purpose does frankincense come to Me from Sheba
         And the sweet cane from a distant land?
         Your burnt offerings are not acceptable
         And your sacrifices are not pleasing to Me.”

21Therefore, thus says the LORD,
         “Behold, I am laying stumbling blocks before this people.
         And they will stumble against them,
         Fathers and sons together;
         Neighbor and friend will perish.”

The Enemy from the North

22Thus says the LORD,
         “Behold, a people is coming from the north land,
         And a great nation will be aroused from the remote parts of the earth.

23“They seize bow and spear;
         They are cruel and have no mercy;
         Their voice roars like the sea,
         And they ride on horses,
         Arrayed as a man for the battle
         Against you, O daughter of Zion!”

24We have heard the report of it;
         Our hands are limp.
         Anguish has seized us,
         Pain as of a woman in childbirth.

25Do not go out into the field
         And do not walk on the road,
         For the enemy has a sword,
         Terror is on every side.

26O daughter of my people, put on sackcloth
         And roll in ashes;
         Mourn as for an only son,
         A lamentation most bitter.
         For suddenly the destroyer
         Will come upon us.

27“I have made you an assayer and a tester among My people,
         That you may know and assay their way.”

28All of them are stubbornly rebellious,
         Going about as a talebearer.
         They are bronze and iron;
         They, all of them, are corrupt.

29The bellows blow fiercely,
         The lead is consumed by the fire;
         In vain the refining goes on,
         But the wicked are not separated.

30They call them rejected silver,
         Because the LORD has rejected them.

NASB ©1995

American Standard Version
To what purpose cometh there to me frankincense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? your burnt-offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing unto me.

Douay-Rheims Bible
To what purpose do you bring me frankincense from Saba, and the sweet smelling cane from a far country? your holocausts are not acceptable, nor are your sacrifices pleasing to me.

Darby Bible Translation
To what purpose should there come to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? Your burnt-offerings are not acceptable, nor are your sacrifices pleasing unto me.

English Revised Version
To what purpose cometh there to me frankincense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing unto me.

Webster's Bible Translation
To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a distant country? your burnt-offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet to me.

World English Bible
To what purpose comes there to me frankincense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me."

Young's Literal Translation
Why is this to Me? frankincense from Sheba cometh, And the sweet cane from a land afar off, Your burnt-offerings are not for acceptance, And your sacrifices have not been sweet to Me.Stedfastness in the Old Paths.
"Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls."--Jer. vi. 16. Reverence for the old paths is a chief Christian duty. We look to the future indeed with hope; yet this need not stand in the way of our dwelling on the past days of the Church with affection and deference. This is the feeling of our own Church, as continually expressed in the Prayer Book;--not to slight what has gone before, …
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII

A Blast of the Trumpet against False Peace
The motive with these false prophets is an abominable one. Jeremiah tells us it was an evil covetousness. They preached smooth things because the people would have it so, because they thus brought grist to their own mill, and glory to their own names. Their design was abominable, and without doubt, their end shall be desperate--cast away with the refuse of mankind. These who professed to be the precious sons of God, comparable to fine gold, shall be esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 6: 1860

Whitefield -- the Method of Grace
George Whitefield, evangelist and leader of Calvinistic Methodists, who has been called the Demosthenes of the pulpit, was born at Gloucester, England, in 1714. He was an impassioned pulpit orator of the popular type, and his power over immense congregations was largely due to his histrionic talent and his exquisitely modulated voice, which has been described as "an organ, a flute, a harp, all in one," and which at times became stentorian. He had a most expressive face, and altho he squinted, in …
Grenville Kleiser—The world's great sermons, Volume 3

Reprobation.
In discussing this subject I shall endeavor to show, I. What the true doctrine of reprobation is not. 1. It is not that the ultimate end of God in the creation of any was their damnation. Neither reason nor revelation confirms, but both contradict the assumption, that God has created or can create any being for the purpose of rendering him miserable as an ultimate end. God is love, or he is benevolent, and cannot therefore will the misery of any being as an ultimate end, or for its own sake. It is …
Charles Grandison Finney—Systematic Theology

Prefatory Scripture Passages.
To the Law and to the Testimony; if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them.-- Isa. viii. 20. Thus saith the Lord; Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.--Jer. vi. 16. That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But …
G. H. Gerberding—The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church

Jesus Raises the Widow's Son.
(at Nain in Galilee.) ^C Luke VII. 11-17. ^c 11 And it came to pass soon afterwards [many ancient authorities read on the next day], that he went into a city called Nain; and his disciples went with him, and a great multitude. [We find that Jesus had been thronged with multitudes pretty continuously since the choosing of his twelve apostles. Nain lies on the northern slope of the mountain, which the Crusaders called Little Hermon, between twenty and twenty-five miles south of Capernaum, and about …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Backsliding.
"I will heal their backsliding; I will love them freely: for Mine anger is turned away."--Hosea xiv. 4. There are two kinds of backsliders. Some have never been converted: they have gone through the form of joining a Christian community and claim to be backsliders; but they never have, if I may use the expression, "slid forward." They may talk of backsliding; but they have never really been born again. They need to be treated differently from real back-sliders--those who have been born of the incorruptible …
Dwight L. Moody—The Way to God and How to Find It

An Obscured vision
(Preached at the opening of the Winona Lake Bible Conference.) TEXT: "Where there is no vision, the people perish."--Proverbs 29:18. It is not altogether an easy matter to secure a text for such an occasion as this; not because the texts are so few in number but rather because they are so many, for one has only to turn over the pages of the Bible in the most casual way to find them facing him at every reading. Feeling the need of advice for such a time as this, I asked a number of my friends who …
J. Wilbur Chapman—And Judas Iscariot

Sin Charged Upon the Surety
All we like sheep have gone astray: we have turned every one to his own way, and the LORD hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. C omparisons, in the Scripture, are frequently to be understood with great limitation: perhaps, out of many circumstances, only one is justly applicable to the case. Thus, when our Lord says, Behold, I come as a thief (Revelation 16:15) , --common sense will fix the resemblance to a single point, that He will come suddenly, and unexpectedly. So when wandering sinners …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1

An Address to the Regenerate, Founded on the Preceding Discourses.
James I. 18. James I. 18. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. I INTEND the words which I have now been reading, only as an introduction to that address to the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, with which I am now to conclude these lectures; and therefore shall not enter into any critical discussion, either of them, or of the context. I hope God has made the series of these discourses, in some measure, useful to those …
Philip Doddridge—Practical Discourses on Regeneration

Jeremiah
Among those who had hoped for a permanent spiritual revival as the result of the reformation under Josiah was Jeremiah, called of God to the prophetic office while still a youth, in the thirteenth year of Josiah's reign. A member of the Levitical priesthood, Jeremiah had been trained from childhood for holy service. In those happy years of preparation he little realized that he had been ordained from birth to be "a prophet unto the nations;" and when the divine call came, he was overwhelmed with …
Ellen Gould White—The Story of Prophets and Kings

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